Walking Cycle - Celia

Practice practice...

Before even getting into creating our own characters we were assigned to practice animation. At first bouncing balls and later understanding how to actually animate the simplest walking cycle before getting into individual creations.

Here’s the walking cycle we were practicing with.

Concept Phase

After that we got taught about character creation, be it as simple as a bean with character -like the minions- or more detailed. The skill level of characterdesign and arts craft didn’t matter as long as the figures we build had a certain attitude coming with them.

As someone who likes creating humanoid designs I wanted to design a little witch for my cycle. During a practice in which we had to create a character in Illustrator within 30 Minutes I made the first, very loose concept of Celia.

Her colours aren’t very vibrant on this concept and she still lacks her happy go lucky attitude but she gave me a rough idea of what I wanted to make!

Stylizing

After that our homework was to make a concept of our design.
Preferably on paper rather than digital.

Taking my copics, I drew her basic concept as I had done during practice first but gave her a more saturated colour scheme.

My first stylization was a very petite and chibi-esque look. Giving her a bigger hat with an exagarated brim to put emphasis on her tiny frame and using the bow for a more girly look.

The second stylization had a more feminine touch. I wanted her to look smart and sassy. A witch who highly values herself, unapologetic confident!

At last there’s a more energetic version of her, that’s very close to the final one. This Celia is very confident and eager to take upon challenges in no time.

Creating Celia

Taking many shapes of the fourth concept, I used Illustrator to build the character I will animate in the end. While most of the last concept was taken over I’ve let the process of creation influence me and made some changes that reminded me of the other two stylizations i.e.: putting more emphasis into her lips or giving her a more resting face like the second concept had.

For the secondary animation of the walkcycle I wanted her to swing a wand, so I had to create a second type of hand, holding the object. The switch of the hand can appear behind the skirt of her dress and given that: The lady sure is lucky to have a dress with pockets!

I had fun creating this character, which is also why she has become a lot more detailed in her final version than in her first concept and I could rather clearly see how she moves during her creation!

Background Aesthetic

Of course the walkcycle needed an environment that would move along with our character. It was part of the assignment.

I’ve let myself get inspired by the works of Tim Burton, trying to create imperfect dark shapes of building, behind them a dark forest and a dark sky above, with only the moon and the stars giving it contrast. It was gloomy, witchy and still cute, but as soon as Celia entered the stage I noticed her colourscheme crashing unpleasantly with the background. She was very pastel and the background had stark dark tones… So I used the colour correction options of After effects to use and lightened up the scene.

Soon everything was pastel and purple, yet I had to be careful with this one too, so the background wouldn’t swallow my character!